


Clarke's Second Law

by suchanadorer



Series: Indistinguishable From Magic [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Post S8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 11:52:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/849251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suchanadorer/pseuds/suchanadorer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible</i>
</p><p>Sam and Lucifer talk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clarke's Second Law

Sam can’t sleep. He can’t stop thinking about the archangel on the other side of the wall, and the lightness he feels inside him to know that Lucifer is no longer trapped in the Cage, that he’s free and that he led them to him so that he could offer to help. He had never expected to see Lucifer again, but now that he’s here Sam’s not sure what the next step is. They can’t exactly pick up where they left off.

He tires of tossing and turning and heads back out to the parking lot, dressed only in his pajamas. Dean rolls over just as he opens the door, but he pushes his face down into the pillow, dead to the world. Sam pulls the door shut with a click and breathes in the damp night air. The gravel of the parking lot makes his bare feet ache, but it’s good and grounding, lets him know that today really happened.

He leans heavily against the back of the Impala and looks up at the sky. It’s cloudy so there’s not a lot to see, but a star or two peeks out from between breaks in the clouds. It’s weird to think that it’s empty now. All his life he believed, and then suddenly angels were real, and now so soon after they were gone. For all the pain and trouble that they’ve caused him and his brother, Sam’s not sure he’s ready to live in a world without angels. If Lucifer plans to fight to put them back, then Sam wants to help him do it.

He hears footsteps on the gravel and scoots over to one side, patting the trunk as a gesture of welcome. He knows who it is without turning around.

“You couldn’t sleep either?” he asks as Lucifer appears next to him. He’s still wearing the hoodie and the leather jacket over it. He seems to sink down into the clothes like a turtle into its shell. Sam’s not sure he has an opinion on it other than liking it because it’s not what his hallucination was wearing, so he can be that much more sure that this Lucifer is real.

“Castiel snores,” Lucifer replies, resting back against the car. “And no, I still haven’t gotten the hang of sleeping yet.”

He follows Sam’s gaze up to the sky.

“Nightmares?” Sam asks. He sees Lucifer nod out of the corner of his eye.

“I remember it, you know. The Cage.” Sam spits out the word and Lucifer stills next to him, turning his head to look at him while Sam keeps his eyes on the clouds. “Most of it’s like a story that I think someone else told me, if that makes any sense. Castiel did a good job, I guess.” Lucifer’s brows furrow at the comment, but he doesn’t ask, so Sam continues. “I remember fire, and pain, torture, typical Hell stuff. Weird, really, because you’d expect the Hell made for an angel to be different from the Hell for a human.”

Sam’s spent some time thinking about his memories of Hell. He knows what he remembers, and what he thinks he remembers. Castiel helped, when he finally did help. What he took away was a layer of lies that left Sam with something closer to the truth. Lucifer has promised that he would never lie to him, but Lucifer wasn’t the only angel in the Cage. Sam isn’t going to accuse Michael of anything, not to Lucifer, but the longer Lucifer listens without interrupting, the easier it is for Sam to talk about it, and the more certain he is that he knows who tortured him in Hell.

“Something that I do remember really vividly is the cold,” he continues after a moment’s quiet. Lucifer goes from still to unnaturally stiff, and Sam knows he was right. “Ice like an igloo, or a fortress, all around me, keeping the fire and the pain away.” He holds his hand out, as if he could touch the invisible wall in front of him. “It always melted, but it always came back, sooner or later. I remember that.”

He flexes his fingers, and Lucifer’s eyes follow the lines of Sam’s arm back up until they’re face to face again.

Sam remembers the color of the ice. He’s looking at it now.

They’re both silent for a moment. Gratitude fills Sam like a dull glow, warming him out to his fingertips. He doesn’t want to imagine what it would have been like without him.

“Thank you,” Sam says gently.

“Does Dean know?” Lucifer asks quietly. He pulls away first, glancing up at the sky but then settling his gaze on the ground in front of his feet.

Sam shakes his head. “We don’t talk about it. If I thought it would help... it would do more harm than good.”

Sam rolls that around in his mind a little, the idea that there are some things he is now more comfortable sharing with Lucifer than with Dean. It’s new, but he understands it, and he’s suddenly sorry that he never got to know Benny.

Lucifer hums, and when he finally speaks his voice is very small. “Death came for you. He took your soul. I thought that was it, that I had failed you and that Michael had finally killed you. I thought he came to take you to Heaven and that I would never see you again.”

Sam runs a hand back through his hair and sucks in a breath. He has no idea how to even begin to respond to Lucifer’s confession. He will admit to himself that he thought about Lucifer after he got out of the Cage. There was a while where he thought he’d brought the hallucinations on himself, but he had never considered the idea that Lucifer would have thought that Death was taking Sam to a destination other than his own body. He figured Lucifer had bigger problems than him, and an easier time protecting himself now that Sam wasn’t around to worry about.

Besides, there is an obvious flaw in Lucifer’s thinking.

“No way am I going to Heaven when I really die.” It comes out more matter-of-fact than sarcastic. “ I mean permanently. For the last time.”

Sam laughs softly at his own joke but Lucifer is taken aback. The Impala sways when he pushes off the trunk to stand in front of Sam. He reaches out and lays his hand on the side of Sam’s face, turning his head down away from the night sky to look Lucifer in the eyes.

“Why would you think that? Of course you’re gonna go to Heaven.” He says it like he really wants Sam to believe it, even if he doesn’t seem happy about it himself.

“I drank demon blood, and I let you, well. I said yes to the devil.” Sam doesn’t like saying it out loud. Putting it into words like that make it so clearly wrong, even if it had been their only choice at the time.

“That’s exactly what God wanted you to do,” Lucifer explains. He hasn’t taken his hand off Sam’s cheek, and Sam hasn’t pulled away from him. “Working with me was God’s plan for you since the dawn of time. Just because he punished me doesn’t mean he’ll punish you.”

Lucifer’s thumb drags gently along Sam’s cheekbone. Lucifer’s still cold, but not as cold as he was. Sam doesn’t think it’s a good sign.

“I never thought I’d see you again,” Sam says. It comes out as a harsh whisper, more broken than Sam wants it to be. “I thought it so hard that I started seeing you, except it wasn’t you.”

“What happened?” Lucifer asks. His hand sinks down to Sam’s shoulder. For a brief moment they’re not in contact, and Sam worries that the moment is over. The weight of Lucifer’s hand is reassuring. The hallucination never touched him.

“First he helped. He- my brain- He helped me with a case. But then he wouldn’t leave me alone, wouldn’t let me sleep. I got sick.”

Sam doesn’t explain further. He hasn’t thought about the time in the hospital a lot since it happened. Sometimes he wonders about Marin. But the whole thing feels pathetic now, reduced to short sentences and laid out for the angel with the face that haunted him for weeks. The same face that looks at him now with concern and regret for pains caused by someone else, by Sam himself.

“You know he wasn’t me,” Lucifer says, ducking his head to meet Sam’s eyes. Sam nods dumbly. “I would’ve torn him apart for hurting you, Sam.”

Sam knows. That was part of what kept him going, once he realized that the other Lucifer wasn’t real. His Lucifer wouldn’t have stood for it. Hearing Lucifer say it is worth the humiliation of having to talk about it, explaining that he missed Lucifer so much that his tortured brain conjured up a new one just as broken as he was.

Lucifer slides his hand around the back of Sam’s neck and steps forward, pulling Sam into a hug. Sam doesn’t even have time to get his arms up before he’s surrounded by the smell of old leather and winter mornings.

There was a time when this would never have happened. Sam would have been terrified, pushed him away, run like hell, but now he leans into it and lets Lucifer rest against him like it’s the most natural thing in the world. This is how it’s going to be between them now, he thinks. Yesterday there was nothing and today there is Lucifer and that’s okay with him. There are two other beings on Earth who know what the inside of the Cage was like, and neither of them care about Sam or Lucifer right now. Sam knows that Lucifer cares about him. Now it’s easier to accept it, and to give in to the idea that he might care about Lucifer, too.

“I’m sorry, Sam. I would’ve stopped it if I could have.”

Sam raises his arms as much as he can and wraps them around Lucifer’s waist. His life has taken a lot of shitty turns, and he’s not sure which one Lucifer means. It wouldn’t surprise him to find out that Lucifer means all of them.

“I know,” Sam says. He’s not sure who’s comforting who, but he thinks maybe they both need it.


End file.
